Monthly Archives: February 2015

After many hours of meticulous and painstaking work, the restoration of all 24 of the musical scores of Alfred Scott Gatty’s Plantation Songs is now complete. The sheet music for all 24 songs is now available for download in full colour, greyscale and monochrome formats, as part of the site downloads. One of the objectives of this site has now been entirely achieved.

A significant anount of the credit for the fact that I have been able to achieve this is owed to the North East of Scotland Music School in Aberdeen, who provided the scans of the extremely rare Fourth Volume in exchange for a donation of paper scores of the first two volumes. I have never owned the rare volume, and it is extremely unlikely that I ever will. I did, however, briefly get to see it in the Administrator’s office in Aberdeen, while the transaction took place.

The digital scans of all four volumes are perfectly playable, and can be printed for ease of use. There is no reason why Scott Gatty’s material should ever be difficult to find again. The paper scores may become increasingly rare, but the digital versions can be downloaded and printed an infinite number of times with no quality loss.

In the future, I may decide to try to create perfect modern scores using a software such as MuseScore. The scores are complex, and I would need to reach a high degree of competence in using this software. It will be an extremely time consuming project, so I can’t consider it for a long time to come.

I still need to find one rare gramophone record to complete the set of musical recordings by the Zono Minstrels. If you have access to a copy of Ding Dong Ding/Down By Dat Ribber, and are prepared to either sell it or lend it for audio transfer, please let me know.

The third objective, that of organising performances and recordings of the complete series of songs, has now become possible through the acquisition of the sheet music. We are still three years away from the hundredth anniversary of Scott Gatty’s passing, but I am already preparing for what would be a huge landmark in the world of music. These songs are 120 years old, and have never been recorded in entirety.